Among Famous Books eBook

told the adventures of two Puritans who strayed into
the Fair, and who regarded the whole affair as the
shop of Satan. There were many other Fairs, such
as that of Sturbridge, and the Elstow Fair itself,
which was instituted by the nuns on the ground close
to their convent, and which is held yearly to the
present day. Such Fairs as these have been a source
of much temptation and danger to the neighbourhood,
and represent in its popular form the whole spirit
of paganism at its worst.

All the various elements of Bunyan’s world live
on in the England of to-day. Thackeray, with
a stroke of characteristic genius, has expanded and
applied the earlier conception of paganism in his great
novel whose title Vanity Fair is borrowed from
Bunyan. But the main impression of the allegory
is the victory of the spiritual at its weakest over
the temporal at its mightiest. His descriptions
of the supper and bed chamber in the House Beautiful,
and of the death of Christiana at the end of the Second
Part, are immortal writings, in the most literal sense,
amid the shows of time. They have indeed laid
hold of immortality not for themselves only, but for
the souls of men. Nothing could sum up the whole
story of Bunyan better than the legend of his flute
told by Mr. S.S. M’Currey in his book of
poems entitled In Keswick Vale. The story
is that in his prison Bunyan took out a bar from one
of the chairs in his cell, scooped it hollow, and
converted it into a flute, upon which he played sweet
music in the dark and solitary hours of the prison
evening. The jailers never could find out the
source of that music, for when they came to search
his cell, the bar was replaced in the chair, and there
was no apparent possibility of flute-playing; but when
the jailers departed the music would mysteriously
recommence. It is very unlikely that this legend
is founded upon fact, or indeed that Bunyan was a
musician at all (although we do have from his pen one
touching and beautiful reference to the finest music
in the world being founded upon the bass), but, like
his own greater work, the little legend is an allegory.
The world for centuries has heard sweet music from
Bunyan, and has not known whence it came. It
has seemed to most men a miracle, and indeed they
were right in counting it so. Yet there was a
flute from which that music issued, and the flute
was part of the rough furniture of his imprisoned
world. He was no scholar, nor delicate man of
belles lettres, like so many of his contemporaries.
He took what came to his hand; and in this lecture
we have tried to show how much did come thus to his
hand that was rare and serviceable for the purposes
of his spirit, and for the expression of high spiritual
truth.